Pandemic: Legacy – Case Files #4

(Please note that this article and others in the series may contain spoilers for the game’s progression, events, and content. While each post covers specific “months” of game play, there are times things occur in different orders or out of place and might spoil something for a future month.)

Welcome back to my play-through experience of Pandemic: Legacy. Be sure to check out my introduction and initial play-through of January here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. You should know this by now, but it should go without saying that SPOILERS FOLLOW.

When we last left off, we’d just finished the month of August. With the Virologist and Immunologist found, our focus has been on trying to recover the remaining two elements required to finally research a cure for C0dA, but there are only four months left to play. We’ve played 10 games and gone 6-4 at this point. It seems our Government Funding Level will continue to hover between 0 and 2, so we can’t count on a lot of help from the deck, though the introduction of equipment cards goes a long way to smooth that out. We know that the military is probably going to turn on us at some point, but just how or when that will happen we don’t know. Plus, we’ve got that Nuclear Option Upgrade out there just taunting us, so there’s a lot of interesting choices still coming. With all of that out of the way, lets jump right in to September.

Pandemic Legacy: Case History

Game 11: September

To begin the month, we learn that we’re being sent to track down a paramilitary expert that’s gone off the deep end a little bit, and is causing panic in the region. Our new goal is to find him, which means this guy’s going to be our informant. This of course introduces another search mini-game, this time needing to be done at military bases in the C0dA region.

With Rooster as our World Champion Where’s Waldo player, we set him to work, and by Rooster’s second turn we found the military guy, which is when all Hell broke lose. In finding our informant, a whole bunch of new information was revealed. In summary, here’s what we learned:

There’s a vast global conspiracy called Zodiac trying to take over the world. They engineered the virus, and have been using it to seed chaos and panic prior to a massive power grab.

Rooster Cogburn is apparently so good at finding these mysterious contacts because he is in fact the agent known as Sagittarius. Now that his cover is compromised, we have to rip us his card, never to play him again, and Nick has to play as one of the Civilian cards for the rest of the month.

We receive a new goal of sabotaging military bases, and are informed that during the setup phase of each game, a new permanent military base will be placed on the board (until we run out of the permanent base stickers).

We finally get the payoff for why we might want to sabotage military bases we accidentally revealed a few months back. Tearing Rooster up was painful: he was our first lost character. It’s also the first time anyone has had to play a civilian, which means they get the standard 4 actions, but nothing special.

Goodbye, Rooster. You were a dirty traitor, but you’ll be missed.

Though handicapped, we manage to pull out the victory. We also manage to eradicate Sad Pandaitis, so for game end upgrades, we place two positive mutations on Sad Pandaitis.

Record: 7-4

We’ve got a whole new world to deal with, and it’s going to start getting worse. It’s appropriate that we go into October with no Government Funding cards, and we’re really hoping we don’t have a lot more searching to do, without Rooster’s ability to pull back equipment cards to help with searching.

Game 12: October

So, of course the first thing we find out, which we probably knew was coming, is that we need to go find Patient Zero, buried in Tehran. This is bad for us, since Tehran is currently in a Collapsing state of panic. This brings out another search game that requires us to go into Tehran to pull it off.

With our best searcher a traitor and lost, we rotate out a few roles. Nick decides to take on the Colonel, who is our best hope for removing Faded figures at this point. And with the new setup conditions, a new permanent Military Base is installed in St. Petersburg. In the opening card distribution, there’s only one black card between the four of us, but we do see some equipment cards come up that give us some ways to move into Tehran without having to discard black cards. We start taking that equipment like crazy. The biggest problem we have is that we just aren’t getting enough (any) of the black cards. In the process, we manage to eradicate red (with almost no effort required) and yellow. We’re struggling to figure out how to get enough black cards to Nick, who’s been taking charge of trying to gather cards for searching. By the time we finally start getting enough black cards, it’s too late.

This is the mess that Europe has become, especially trying to get into Tehran.

The trail on Patient Zero went cold. There was just no way to find them, and our laser focus on finding them caused us to ignore North America. San Fransisco collapsed, experiencing three outbreaks and ultimately triggering the exhaustion of blue cubes to seal our fate in what would have been a massive 4 city outbreak spreading across North America out of Montreal.

Record: 7-5

To wrap the game, we took our final positive mutation on Walken Fever, and attached the Nuke to the Taipei card, which we hope not to need next round, but will have handy. All told, while no one enjoys losing, we aren’t too sad about having to take another crack at finding Patient Zero before the month expires, and we’ll get some funding back to help.

As we check in with the how panic around the world has risen, things are continually progressing from bad to worse in the zombie territories, though we’ve still managed to keep C0dA from spreading any farther. Our first city fell, and two others are on the verge. We’re still holding on to our FOB in Istanbul, but with Zodiac now placing new bases, we suspect it won’t be too long before the one even there in Istanbul becomes a liability. We did take out the last base in the Americas, as well as the base in Khartoum, but there are still three more permanent bases out there, with one more still available.

Panic Levels

Blue Cities

Yellow Cities

Black Cities

Red Cities

Unaffected

5

4

3

9

Unstable

6 (+1)

3

1

2

Rioting 2

1

4 (-1)

3 (-2)

–

Rioting 3

1

1 (+1)

3 (+2)

1

Collapsing

1 (+1)

–

1 (-1)

–

Fallen

–

–

1 (+1)

–

Faded

2 / 12 Infected

–

12 / 12 Infected

1 / 12 Infected

Game 13: October Part 2

This time around, we decide we need to do something about our ability to get into Baghdad, so I decide to play the Operations Expert, which will allow me to build a Military Base in Baghdad, which will ease travel into the city, as well as improve our search results. With our Funding Action up to 2 again, we’re feeling good about our chances. To begin the game, a new Military Base is placed in Tokyo.

This game was actually pretty straightforward. I get a base set up in Tehran after Parachuting in (using an Equipment card). We manage to get a modestly better set of black cards to begin the searching, and just about everyone takes part. We find Patient Zero, and with him, unlock the key to C0dA. We’re able to take out the base in Tokyo, though can’t do anything about the others. We manage to complete the month with a win without a single Outbreak triggered, though there were getting to be a fair number of Faded in the Middle East by the end. Also of interest was the fact that the Nuclear Option card was available, but we chose not to deploy it this month.

Record: 8-5

At the end of the round, we decide that we need to bring in another character capable of making a good contribution. We decide to deck out the Generalist with new upgrades. First, we give her the Shady Background upgrade, which broadens her ability to sabotage military bases, which is about to be much more important. We also add the Hero upgrade, allowing her to take the Self Sacrifice action (taking a Scar to prevent the Infect Step for one turn) at any time.

We’ve got everything we finally need to develop a cure for C0dA!

With Patient Zero, we have all the elements needed to synthesize a cure. We get to open the last major package, which gives us all sorts of new goodies. The most important of these are new buildings, called Treatment Centers. These orange buildings will begin to slowly pump out doses that can be used to treat Faded victims. They can also be used to inoculate a Faded city once there are no Faded, meaning Faded can no longer be placed there. At the end of a player’s turn each treatment center can generate one dose (represented by tiny orange pills), which can be picked up by players and used to administer treatments. We also get the Immunologist character card, who is basically the medic for treating C0dA. He still needs to have enough pills on hand to treat everyone in a city, but can do it all in one action instead of several.

One other thing we learn, and why the Generalist’s new upgrades are so important, is that the number of Military Bases in an area hinders treatment. Administering treatment takes one extra action per Military Base in the region. With two bases in the western half of C0dA territory, that’s bad news if we can’t get rid of them quickly. All told, we’re shaping up to have a wild finish to the year.

Game 14: November

The Quarantine Specialist is out of commission. We’ve leaned on Jemima for a long time, but quarantining isn’t going to get us far enough now. We waffle on weather to take the Immunologist or the Operations Expert since we really need to start getting some Treatment Centers up and running, but ultimately we opt for Franklin, and Dagin decides to play him as I take over the Generalist.

This game starts BADLY. We have 6 Outbreaks before we make it around the table once. There was really no hope for us. We do manage to place two Treatment Centers in Istanbul, our reliable FOB, and Algiers. We also manage to implement the treatment for C0dA in Istanbul and Cairo. That’s the very minor silver lining for a game that will be our fastest loss ever.

Just before the end of the game, in a hope to try to buy us a little time, we deploy our tactical nuke to destroy Karachi, the heart of Zombie Outbreak central. It buys us a two turns, but it’s an ultimately pointless gesture.

There’s now a three-city cluster that are all fallen between Karachi, Baghdad, and Tehran.

What a mess…

Record: 8-6

For our game end upgrades, we make both Treatment Centers permanent. We hope this will give us a better chance to take care of things when we try again. Getting the Funding Action cards back will certainly help as well.

Game 15: November Part 2

Now that the Ops Expert isn’t really needed, Dagin swaps him out for the Immunologist, who is apparently the older brother of the Generalist. The Family relationship chosen by fielding the Immunologist for the first time guarantees at least one of those two characters will have a strong first turn. Now that we’ve got a couple of Treatment Centers available, we want to start pushing those zombies back a little bit more. As the Generalist, my job is to see to it that we neutralize the Military Bases quickly. Thanks to my new sibling connection, I get six actions my first turn, and with those actions I manage to sabotage the Military Base in FOB Istanbul then parachute into St. Petersburg to take out that Base all in one turn. This gives Dagin a much freer hand to start moving about and curing in the Western half of C0dA territory until we can do something about our remaining bases.

A look at the new Immunization Centers and the little Treatment capsules that have to be collected in order to treat Faded.

While not hopeless like the first attempt at November was, this month became a very tense game that always felt on the verge of spinning out of control. Typhoid Mary completes her sabotage efforts, destroying all remaining Military Bases, but has to use her Heroic ability to prevent one of three potential Outbreaks. She takes the Pyrophobic card, which now prevents her from using the sabotage action any more. This is fine, since there’s nothing left to sabotage, though we now tell the story of her having to do some terrible things to take down those bases that has given her PTSD.

I’ve seen things, terrible things…

Dagin manages to install the cure in 3 more cities. We fight a tense battle to keep a number of areas under control, surrendering a few more outbreaks in North and South America, but we emerge victorious. There’s a treatment line running along the ruin that is the heart of the Middle East. Typhoid Mary takes another Scar being heroic to prevent the outcome of two back-to-back epidemics. All told 5 cities have been immunized, all permanent military bases removed, and we’re ready to tackle December.

Record: 9-6

For our game end Upgrades, we decide to make the Treatment Center we placed in Hong Kong permanent, and give Typhoid Mary one last Upgrade that allows her to replace the upgrade slot with a Scar, effectively giving her one last non-fatal chance to be Heroic.

So, since we last looked at worldwide panic levels, things in the Middle East have certainly gotten worse (though we didn’t help when we nuked Karachi). South America took a pounding, but I feel like aside from our Triangle of Death in the Middle East we’ve done a pretty good job shielding the rest of the world from massive panic.

The World map at the end of November. Just one month left to go.

Panic Levels

Blue Cities

Yellow Cities

Black Cities

Red Cities

Unaffected

3

3

2 (-1)

8 (-1)

Unstable

6

4 (+1)

1

2

Rioting 2

1

2 (-2)

1 (-2)

1 (+1)

Rioting 3

1

3 (+2)

5 (+2)

1

Collapsing

1

–

0 (-1)

–

Fallen

–

–

3 (+2)

–

Faded

2 / 12 Infected

–

12 / 12 Infected

1 / 12 Infected

Immunized

1 Immunized

–

4 Immunized

–

Next time, we’ll be finishing the game, and I’ll be delivering my final thoughts on our experience. We know the number of goals will drop to two, and the Military is likely to be incredibly unhappy with us. How will it all tend? Check back next time to see.